Rocky Point Park – creolened.com

Where: Rocky Point Park, Old Orchard Park, Inlet Park, Old Mill Site Park (Port Moody)
Weather: Sunny, 27-28°C

The Outing

While it looks like we covered all of Port Moody’s parks, these are all clustered along the north shore of Burrard Inlet along a several km stretch, so it’s actually quite compact. Handy, considering the unusually high heat.

Due to my annoyingly slow recovery from my current cold, I passed on the early part of the birding in Pitt Meadows, but it was mostly out in the open under a cruel sun (ie. hot), though pretty, based on Nic’s pics (plus my recollection of being there last summer). Nic’s quest to see a Bullock’s Oriole paid off, and he didn’t even know it until he was looking at his photos later, which is like getting just the prize you wanted in the bottom of the Cracker Jack box¹. He also saw a red-winged blackbird with a white tail, which is decidedly weird, as well as cliff swallows tending to their nests, which are reminiscent of something you’d have H.R. Giger design for an Alien film (the nests, not the swallows).

I joined in the next stage of the quest in mid-afternoon: To find the heron rookery at Rocky Point Park before all the baby herons left their nests. We were aided in several ways:

Helpful signs on the path saying, “You’re in a heron colony, be quiet, you clumsy loud human!”
Some directions given to us weeks ago by people who knew of the rookery when we were last at Rocky Point.

It turns out the directions were off probably by a factor of two and the heron nests, which they said would be at or near eye-level, were only at eye level if you were 10–20 metres tall. Which I am not.

But after wandering the lower trail several times (twisty, dirt-packed and filled with enough exposed tree roots to give me PTSD), we opted to try the path higher up, which is paved, civilized and also available for cyclists. This gave us the vantage point we needed, and we saw plenty of nests up (way up) in the trees. Yay! Most of them were empty. Boo. The ones that weren’t had nearly full-grown herons, so we totally missed on the goofy baby dinosaur stage of development. But we will know where to look during the next nesting season.

Although we did see more birds than we normally do at Rocky Point, there still weren’t a lot, and most of my shots were mediocreat best. Even my scenery shots taken with the camera were crooked (I fare much better with the camera than the phone). I blame everything on my cold. At least I never coughed while taking a photo, though that might have at least looked artsy.

The Shots

Soon™

The Birds (and other critters). Rare or rarely-seen birds highlighted in bold. I have ommitted birds from the Nic-exclusive part of the birding, otherwise the list would have been much longer and more interesting.

Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:

American robin
Northern flicker
Song sparrow
Spotted towhee

Waterfowl and shorebirds:

Canada goose
Great blue heron
Mallard

Common:

American crow
European starling

Raptors:

None

Non-birds:

None that I noticed. Maybe some bees?

Where: Burnaby Lake (Burnaby), Como Lake (Coquitlam), Rocky Point Park (Port Moody), Tlahutum Regional Park (Coquitlam)
Weather: Sunny, 12-20°C

The Outing

With a rare day of sun, we headed off for a day of Friday birding.

Burnaby Lake (Burnaby)

We started at Burnaby Lake–but with a twist! We would start at the Avalon parking lot, walk to Piper Spit, then continue around the entire 10.3 km loop back to the parking lot.

We had barely begun our trek when, sitting on a railing on the footbridge over Silver Creek, we saw a Swainson’s thrush–a lifer. This is the same spot we also saw a brown creeper, so apparently it’s a favourite hangout for Birds You Almost Never See. After grabbing a few shots before it flew off, we continued on to Fungus Face™, where several Douglas squirrels were dashing about, stopping occasionally to sit on their haunches, nibble on food and look adorable. After a few moments, it became apparent that there were more than just a couple squirrels. Several were taking to higher branches and chittering in a vaguely disturbing way, perhaps as a territorial display. As the vibe shifted from “aw, cute!” to “be prepared to run” we opted to move on.

We’ve had quite a bit of rain recently, and this was evident at Piper Spit, where the land mass to the east of the pier–which had been getting larger–was now completely submerged. The lone coot was absent, but in its place was a single green-winged teal. The male mallards and wood ducks are rapidly shedding their mating colours, and letting themselves go, as men do in the summer. The pier was dominated by geese and their rapidly-growing goslings, some of whom are entering that awkward teen phase where they have tiny heads but giant legs. It was apparently morning nap time, so there wasn’t a lot of activity, though the geese were being weird, as usual.

We moved to the viewing platform next door and appreciated the scenery and sun before heading back down. This is where we encountered Sarcasto. He had a BTL¹, identifying him as a likely birder. He was on the trail leading to the viewing platform and aiming at some kind of bird. Apparently as we approached the bird took off. Someone else nearby wondered what it was, to which Nic responded likely a house finch. Sarcasto turned around to us and said, in a clearly sarcastic tone, “Thank you.” Like we had done a terrible thing by possibly and unintentionally scaring off a finch.

Sarcasto would follow us for much of the rest of the way, probably thinking of new sarcastic things to say the whole time.

We continued on encountered two more lifers (for me, at least, Nic can confirm if both were lifers for him as well): a dusky flycatcher and a willow flycatcher. It was a liferpalooza.

Other highlights from around the lake:

An osprey circling above Piper Spit
A heron flying close overhead, then perching in a nearby tree and looking all stabby-faced for us
the water fountains (yes, these count as highlights)
Several pretty views of the lake, which is already in its lily pad-covered glory
Swallows buzzing low over the water at the rowing club and then hanging out on the marshy shore nearby
A surprise killdeer hanging out with them that we didn’t see until Nic spotted it in one of his photos afterwards
A coyote wandering the trail right near the 10 km mark. It moved off onto one of the horse trails before we could get photos, alas

With over 20,000 steps already logged on my watch, we moved on.

Como Lake (Coquitlam)

I suggested Como Lake, because it is small and easy to walk around and we might see ducks or something. And we did! We also saw ducklings, which were cute and fuzzy and seemed to enjoy snarfing up the copious amounts of cottonwood dander floating on the lake surface (cottonwood dander was everywhere). This was the place that had famously netted off access points to the water to get rid of the geese and on last visit it had been a 100% success–no geese to be found.

This time they were legion, complete with goslings. But it was worth it for the baby ducks. Maybe they’ll put the netting back once everyone is all grown up.

There are also ping pong tables here now, and playing ping pong on a bright summer day strikes me as both weird and appealing.

Rocky Point Park (Port Moody)

The last time we went to Rocky Point Park, we never actually got there, because there was no place to park, and we left without ever stopping.

Being that it was a weekday this time, we actually did manage to park.

On the downside, there were few birds to be seen, mostly just crows. But the scenery was nice–what we could see of it. We hit the Shoreline Trail and discovered that since our last visit they have been replacing the boardwalk at the end of the inlet (the new boardwalk is being raised significantly higher “to accommodate rising sea levels due to climate change”, which is both a good thing to plan for, but also yikes, because the new boardwalk is going to be a lot higher). This meant we had to go around on the street to get to the other side, where a man showed Nic photos of a local bear (the furry kind that lives in the forest and hibernates, not the furry kind that hits on cubs in bars). I shot a few of the crows, then as we headed back, we encountered two people from Environment Canada (?) that identified us as birders thanks to our BTLs. They let us know about a heron rookery that will still have its hideously cute fledglings for about another month before they leave the nest, so we may venture back to catch some shots before then. We didn’t immediately go because at this point we’d walked about 5 million steps.

While the views were nice, Rocky Point ended up being a bit of a disappointment. I mean, even a couple of seagulls dropping clams from the sky would have been something. Alas.

Tlahutum Regional Park (Coquitlam)

The people above also mentioned a kind of bunting at Tlahutum, which was our next and last destination. Unfortunately, neither of us could remember their general directions on where to go, but it seemed to be two spots: one in a grove of trees near the first and smaller parking lot (which we never park at), and the other past a pond by the forensic psychiatric hospital. We tried the area near the smaller parking lot first, but did not see any buntings–or any other birds. Merlin stayed mum.

We moved to the main parking lot and noodled around near the entrance to the hospital, discovering a grassy labyrinth (complete with signpost identifying it as such), leading to a debate over labyrinth vs. maze. We saw no sign of any pond. Nic wondered if it might be near the gazebo, but it appeared occupied, and it just felt creepy to wander the grounds of a psychiatric hospital, so we agreed to do more research and try again at a later date.

With the aforementioned 5 million steps in mind, we stuck to the community gardens, and only certain parts of it, as all the rain had resulted in big ol’ puddles forming again at key junctions. We saw a lot of swallows, including a violet green swallow. We briefly saw some goldfinches and Nic managed a single shot before they flew away, possibly forever, satisfied at their taunting of us.

The day ended with me grabbing a couple of slightly fuzzy shots of a robin. I didn’t use manual focus because it looked fine through the EVF. One day I’ll learn.

Overall, though, a fine day of birding, with multiple rare sightings, pleasant weather, no sunburn and plenty of lush, green scenery. 9/10 black-capped chickadees (which we did not see, sad face).